PunkITechs

Saturday, December 29, 2012

After surviving the impending doom, another year comes to a close. It's been one of the most vibrant years for politics, technology and punk rock. We kicked out some of the most vile members of congress like Allen West, California X'd out their draconian "three strikes" law. Joe bloody Lieberman (the WORST senator ever, see a previous post for details) is FINALLY retiring. And as far as cultural tolerance goes, we saw the legalization of ganja and gay marriage.A pretty big shift in the context of the limited scope of the American political spectrum.

It was also a year of arrests, intimidation and an assassination plot(this was a big story leading many to believe that the FBI planned on assassinating Occupy leaders, but a careful reading reveals that the FBI merely 'uncovered' a plot to do that. I'll leave it to the readers of this to draw their own conclusions). One member of Anonymous (Barrett Brown) even got raided.

Oh, and did I mention that SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) got defeated? The people WON the Internet!

#WIN

As far as music goes for this year, I have been lagging when it comes to going to shows or checking out new music. OFF! seems to be the band that is keeping punk rock alive. I saw them play a show in my neck of the woods, but I ran too fast in the circle pit, got dehydrated and kicked out and ended up missing Refused (who played right after them). Right now I'm missing an awesome show featuring hardcore bands such as Revenge and Dick Move.

Keith Morris(OFF!) at his finest

This is also the year where I've discovered a genre of music that I've never heard about: Nerdcore/Nerdrap. It has been on heavy rotation whether I'm just using Youtube, or if I'm listening to my iTouch in the car. YTCracker is (IMHO) the BEST nerd rapper out there. He spits about NES, energy drinks, and 0day exploits (among many other nerdy topics) with some of the dopest rhymes and beats you will ever hear. He came out with a new EP just a week ago, so check it out here.

Nerdcore will rise up and get elevated -MC Frontalot

What will 2013 bring? Hopefully more awesomeness in everything this isolated corner of the internet stands for. On a personal level, I will keep raging against our injustice system, hacking/modding and delivering you more of that sweet original content(OC) that you crave. Let's make 2013 the greatest.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

25 Arrested in Raids Targeting Hacker Group Anonymous

Twenty-five people have been arrested in Europe and South America on allegations of belonging to Anonymous, the online hacker group. Interpol says the alleged hackers are accused of plotting attacks against Colombian government websites and other targets.

HOWEVER... Columbia is terrible on human rights. They are one of the few holdout countries that support the US and all their brutal savagry and militaristic adventures there.

Iowa State Senate Backs "Ag-Gag" Bill

The Iowa State Senate has approved a bill that would punish animal rights activists who go undercover to expose farm animal abuse. Backed by Iowa’s agriculture industry, the "Ag-Gag" bill would impose fines and prison sentences on anyone who seeks agricultural employment to document the conditions of farm animals. In recent years, undercover videos have revealed shocking conditions at a number of locations and have led to plant closures and meat recalls. In a statement, the group Mercy for Animals said: "Lawmakers should be focusing on strengthening [Iowa’s] pathetic [animal cruelty] laws, not silencing whistleblowers who expose animal abuse or other serious issues involving the safety and security of the American food supply."

HOWEVER... The movie Food Inc. has helped to shine light on what really happens to our food. Agriculture companies are extremely powerful in Iowa. This is probably against the first amendment. Interesting how parts of society have utter contempt for people trying to uphold the law, and praise for the people that violate it.

Blackwater continues to kill innocent people, The government continues to kill, spy and lie. But you get harsher penalties for blowing whistles than dumping toxic waste. Ain't that 'merica

Tuesday, February 28, 2012

There's an annoying feeling that comes over me realizing I'm wasting my intellectual capacity and potential being a pawn for the corporate power structure. I know that I'm better than where I'm at but don't quite have the skills necessary for some of the tech jobs I see when frequenting Indeed.com. So I need TIME to build those skills, but I spend my time behind a register dealing with slow people who STILL don't know how to use a credit card slider in the 21st century.

Enter Wal-Mart. "The Death Star" as one of my professes put it. I could hear everybody's thoughts telling me that I sold out. Things would be different if I just stuck with my first true love, technology. Gave it up temporarily because I thought I wasn't 1337 enough compared to my computer tech classmates who had a little more luck and a little less ADD than I did. (OK, and I will admit that I'm a lot more motivated than I was back then).

I know that I'm going to get out of that soul-killing place as soon as possible. Maybe the good thing about working there is the fact that I know that I don't want to be like all the "lifers" there who don't have any other career options because of their situations, or the fact that they don't know anything else. I WILL escape from retail. I WILL get the certifications and skills I need. I will become something greater than myself and go back and laugh in the faces of all my teachers. I will see all the bullies and jocks in high school that end up getting office jobs, and they are miserable because they never pursued what they wanted to do. And oh yea, they're balding in their late 20's because they work at a shitty job, and they drive their piece of shit cars back to their dull-ass homes and watch TV with their average looking wives (if they actually find somebody that will want to settle down with them and their piss-poor incomes).

So this is what I do for fun at Wal-Mart, I cracked the customer service survey code. Every third receipt has a survey code at the top, and if you go online and take it, you could win a $1,000 gift card. So I actually started observing these survey codes and noticed a patter. There's 11 digits, and during each print, only the last digit changes. It always goes down the alphabet, if it's a letter, and up in numbers if it's a number. So it increments basically. When one cycle completes, the second to last digit or number does the same and increments by one.

7DKYZBHTZ4QC7DKYZBHTZ4QG

This is an example of how it would increment. The "7D" hasn't changed since I've kept records, but the "KYZ" went a long time without changing before it finally changed. I'm also really sure that the "TZ" doesn't change, but I think I've also seen TY. The section of "BH" changes every day. "4" seems to change whenever you change registers. The rate at which the last letter or number increments is usually by 2 or 3. So for instance, the hop from C def G, has 3 spaces in between. But sometimes it could be C de F.

Now, what could be the use for this? The only idea that I've came up with is to actually take the
survey online, which I did. If you're a cashier like me, you could just pretend that you're somebody else and make yourself look awesome. While you're at it, you can give your score low scores on things like "Has the lowest prices" because you want prices to be lower, so trash your store for they're lack of low prices. Also, things like "Restrooms are spotless and clean." Well, we fired our maintenance guy, so the restrooms look like vikings came in and pooped zombies everywhere. So that category gets a low score. You want to see bathrooms get clean? Do the same at your store. The thing that I loved most about the survey was the fact that you didn't even have to enter your name! You could remain anonymous until the part where you actually enter for a chance to win the $1,000 gift card. Then just put credentials of somebody you know (with their permission).

So that's it. Go have fun and change your workplace for the better. Now you actually have a say!

Sunday, February 26, 2012

So I haven't posted on this little hole-in-the wall for a long time. I'm lazy I know. But I had one of the greatest epiphanies of all time today. I NEED to write a blog about this. I'm sure there are webmasters scouring the internet for how to put their website on their localhost so that way they'll be able to test things out when they upload modules or write custom PHP. They need to know that what they are doing will not negatively affect their site in any way. I believe that one of the hardest things about Drupal is installing it. So I'm going to take you step by step into everything you need to do.

1). First things first, do NOT use a bundle. I've tried many bundles, and none of them have been successful for me. Plus, Downloading each one gives you better security. You probably don't need to worry toooo much about security if nobody else uses your computer except for you, and if you don't use public wi-fi all the time.

2) Install MySQL from their website. I'm using Windows, so I used the MSI. If you are using a different OS, follow your OS-based install instructions for MySQL.

3) Make sure that the thing about "remote connections" is unticked, unless you have an awesome reason to leave it ticked. This is for security purposes. Speaking of security, set a root password and remember it! You will save yourself a lot of headaches if you don't forget this. Don't make it too difficult, and don't make it "password" or "12345". Right after you install it, you'll want to find the config file. It will take you through more setup options, like being able to run MySQL through the command prompt in the PATH directory, which is definitely awesome, and great for debugging purposes. So go ahead, fool around with the commandline and have some fun. Create some databases, and delete them, just to prove to yourself that you can. Log in using "mysql -u root -p" (without the quotes) Now, let's make some awesomeness! For instance: CREATE DATABASE AWESOMENESS;
then

SHOW DATABASES;

You'll see test, information_schema and awesomeness. Nice! You don't have to type in all caps, but it's sort of an SQL tradition. If you are mad at the errors that you sometimes get in MySQL, typing in all caps is potentially a great way to blow off some steam. If you want to delete the database you just made, just do

DROP DATABASE AWESOMENESS;

4) Install PHP: Go to their website and download the latest release. By now, you should be using PHP 5. As of this blog posting, the latest release is 5.3.10. I suggest getting the most recent version. My website that I webmaster states that the version of PHP that it is running is like 5.3.3gentoo, kinda weird but the latest version of PHP works fine with that. Always opt for the latest version unless you find a good reason not to. Better to stay fresh, so to speak. I went for a standard install. I didn't add Pear or any of the non-standard things that PHP has to offer. Do what suits you best. Now here's where you do some fanangling that will come in handy later. This is mostly for importing large databases that you've got from FTPing, or downloading from your server. You edit the php.ini file with these lines:

Use your text editor's "find" feature to find these values. These are NOT the default values. These are what I changed them to.

5) Install Apache from their website. A default installation should work fine. When you are finished, you have to edit the mod_rewrite file so that it says "true."

6). Install PHPMyAdmin from their website. I installed the last one on the list, the zip file. You are going to need to configure a few things. You will need to login as the root user you specified earlier when you installed MySQL. Your username will be "root" and the password will be whatever you set when you installed MySQL. There's a file called "config.inc.sample.php." Copy it and save the other as "config.inc.php." You'll need to edit this file in a few ways:

$cfg['Servers'][$i]['auth_type'] = 'cookie'; //You want this as cookie, also change the blowfish secret at the top to something like
$cfg['blowfish_secret'] = 'liukjnrguingngjnifflsklsksdoskdsdkskdskmiu';
If you are importing large databases, add this:
$cfg['ExecTimeLimit'] = 1300; //This will make it so you can import large files and not have it
timeout. We needed to do this in conjunction with the editing the php
So now you're in PHPMyAdmin, and in order to import large databases, you'll need to add that line.

So now create a user and call it "drupaluser" or whatever you want to call it. Import your database and then grant all privileges to it. Just a word of caution, you might want to grant all privleges besides the grant. privilege. On my computer, I granted all including the grant to my drupaluser. Now it seems that I can't log in as root. That doesn't really matter though, because I can still create databases just fine. But that is a little necessary tidbit in case you run into the same thing. I can do everything root can do, so it doesn't bother me. So we've got this out of the way, now it's time to put everything together.

Honestly, I don't know how to backup a website or a database. (Somebody did that for me) But you will need the most recent version of your site and the database. Use an FTP client like Filezilla to connect to your server, and then download your backups from there. Put your web folder in the "Htdocs" folder in Apache. Now you only need to do just a little bit more tweaking before going forward. Look for the sites/default directory. There are either 1 or 2 files. If you have only the defaultsettings.php, copy it and rename it to "settings.php." (If you already have a settings.php file then delete it and copy the defaultsettings.php and rename it to settings.php) Then put it in a new folder called "files". Make it a writable folder by right-clicking and going to properties and "permissions".
Now type in localhost/(what folder(s) your site is in)/install.php. The Drupal installation screen should come up. Put in your database name and password. Use "drupaluser" (or whatever name you chose) and that password or you could use "root" and your root password. One of the screens has an "Advanced" tab. click it. In my case, the database HAD TO BE PREFXED! If your configuration is the same, you need to prefix your database! If you don't, you'll have a clean install of Drupal. That's not what you want! You want the stuff that is on your site to appear as it is on your localhost! Everything should go well from there. Enjoy Drupaling it up! If you have any questions, or if you were unclear about something, leave a comment.

Sunday, September 25, 2011

I really wish I was in NY right now. So I'm doing my patriotic duty to spread the word about this. Basically, people are camping out at Zucotti park near Wall Street. Everybody needs to know about this, especially people who live in New York because there's like 10 million or so people that live there. I'm sure not a whole lot of people know what's going on because the media's silence on this is deafening. I bet you might not have even known that 1,000 environmental activists got arrested in front of the White house.

ll Street, UPS Store 118A #205, NY, NY 10038. As far as I know, this is how you can send supplies to our freedom fighters. Don't send cash or checks. Money orders are fine. If I get a chance to go, I'll bring a lot of stuff with me.

For the betterment of the world and the heralding in of a new society. More updates soon. Solidarity strikes everywhere in your respective hometowns: Organize them. Tell people to join you in them. Spread the word.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

The internet is the last bastion of freedom we have in the world. Any attempt to tame or censor it should not be allowed. The Protect IP act is just one of the many police state nazi laws that are in the workings of getting passed. It's just recently made it to the senate floor.

You know what sucks? Do you really think these corporate whores on capitol hill really know dick about technology? No. Let's say you wanted to go ti PirateBay for example, not to download anything, but read the comments and find out more information on a product. Well, PirateBay is at risk of being shutdown every day with all of these laws that are trying to get passed by people who utterly FAIL at critical thinking. For instance, what if you were a victim of a botnet that downloaded copyright material onto your computer, and then you got reported for it? You could probably end up in jail for a crime that you didn't commit.

Google hasn't made the best descisions in the past (They've actually stopped their censorship in China, but at one point were ok with it.) but on this issue I've got to give them a lot of credit for their strong stance against Protect IP.

Sometimes it can be hard to imagine that in the "land of the free" we have people elected to congress that are VERY much against the values and ideals of this country. Joe Lieberman for example:

“Right now China, the government, can disconnect parts of its Internet in case of war and we need to have that here too.”

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Across Northern Africa, and the Middle East there are revolutions brewing everywhere. Here's a map...

It's really a wonderful thing that is happening around the world. People are finally getting tired of living under the boot for so long. These are the types of things that keep the Washington planners of world domination awake at night. What started in Tunisia is now spreading to Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia would be the biggest loss for the western powers because we stand a chance at losing control of their oil supply. Iraq is also facing an uprising of people pissed off at the government because they can't provide the people with anything it seems. So now the US domination of Iraq just got a little bit more difficult.

Even though the US is stretched paper thin abroad with all our military involvements, we want to go even further by instituting a "no fly zone" over Libya. Libya is a fairly large country, so this endeavor would be quite difficult.

The greatest hope would be for these rebellions to be a true repudiation of all the US backed dictators we've supported over the years. We can only hope that Northern Africa and the Middle East becomes another power block like the countries in Central and South America where it will become much harder for the US to interfere in other countries' business. If the middle east moves towards a democracy then they will become much harder to topple.

Of course, it is likely that everything won't go well. If we start to experience $5 a gallon oil because of the revolutions, then the dumb and ignorant will blame Obama because of their lack of understanding of history and geopolitical knowledge in general. The only thing he can (and should) be faulted for is for continuing the brutal double standard of selective human rights enforcement. During the Egyptian revolution he tried to seem like he supported Mubarak (to please the Saudis) and the protesters (to appease the rest of the world that values human rights). It failed pretty miserably. What is for certain is that our president hasn't learned the lesson of taking the middle side of the road and getting hit by traffic going both ways.